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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180446">Vital Signs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardlights/pseuds/waywardlights'>waywardlights</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Craved and Hated [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Evil Within (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Post-TEW2, even more gratuitous headcanoning for post-game events, look i needed something to make a longer plot out of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:53:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180446</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardlights/pseuds/waywardlights</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The ghosts of the past are always on Darius' heels, but Ruben is never far behind them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ruben "Ruvik" Victoriano/Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Craved and Hated [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983934</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Vital Signs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The streets were familiar, and Darius hated them.</p><p>He’d seen them countless nights in the past thirty or so years of restless sleep, interrupted by the distant, ringing sound of a gunshot and the sinking realization that he had never been enough. Countless nights spent chasing the sound, the feeling, down those streets even though he knew damn well what he’d find.</p><p>Some nights he found what he craved and hated. He found Toby’s blank, empty face, blood running from the corner of his mouth and his stare vacant, glassy, looking up at him from the sidewalk with a pool of blood fanned out around his body too perfectly to be real.</p><p>Some nights he didn’t find what he craved and hated, and felt relieved, and guilty. Relieved because the sight was always enough to make sleep seem unappealing for at least the next three fucking days, but guilty because it felt like he was just running <em> away</em><em>.</em> Like the coward he was.</p><p>Tonight he found neither of those things.</p><p>He ran, as always, because he didn’t know what the fuck else to do. Standing still was the same as doing nothing, and he wasn’t so much of a goddamn coward that he would do <em> nothing</em><em>.</em> He ran, down paths too familiar, but instead of a body, all he found was the blood.</p><p>Wheeling around, Darius came face-to-face with that same glassy stare in a face he knew better than his own, shockingly young compared to his now-weathered and fucking ugly mug. He was twice as old as Tobias Archer had been when he died. He didn’t know how to feel about that except <em> bad. </em></p><p>“Why do you get to stay?” Toby’s voice hissed, and Darius asked himself the same damn question every day. “Why do you get to stay when I didn’t?”</p><p>Glassy, accusing, far too close to the heart of the question Darius craved and hated. Toby waited for an answer Darius didn’t have, never had, didn’t expect to ever have.</p><p>“I...” his voice was a far cry from the rogue agent that had given Mobius absolute hell for the past few years, but he faced down something on a whole other scale than anything Mobius had ever sent him into, and that was fucking saying something.</p><p>His older brother’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits, and his hands were around Darius’ throat before he could think to stop it. Or maybe he just didn’t want to. Maybe it was exactly what <em> should </em> have happened those thirty-odd years ago.</p><p>His lungs rebelled against the natural order of things, because of course they fucking did, and grasped for air that should have been Toby’s, stealing it back from the space between them. Blackness rose in the corners of Darius’ eyes, and he’d been choked out enough with Mobius to know what was coming, but didn’t fight it, didn’t even want to try.</p><p>Shadows overwhelmed him, and for once, Darius did the one thing he’d sworn he’d never do in the twenty-seven years since Toby’s death: surrender.</p><hr/><p>Air. Something his lungs needed, unfortunately. It hurt like a bitch as soon as the aborted gasp hit his chest, so tight someone may as well have been <em> really </em> choking him out, but Darius let the burn assure him he was, for better or worse, awake and alive. Pain was something he craved and hated for that exact reason.</p><p>It was still dark out. No surprise there. The hotel suite was silent, and that was what made the sudden buzz of his communicator that much more surprising.</p><p>He didn’t <em> jump</em><em>,</em> he’d tell himself later. It was just urgency that made his hand jerk across to the cheaply-made bedside table, where his communicator waited. Darius could almost feel the pointed impatience across the unknown gap of space.</p><p>Darius’ communicator--which he’d never seen fit to grant the designation of a <em> cell phone</em>--was something hand-built, off the grid, and resembled a device one might find in the late 90s or early 00s. Or maybe in a museum, according to the person who possessed his communicator’s only other designated contact point. It was also a closely guarded secret from Ventura, and Kidman, who was already proving way too sharp for Darius’ liking.</p><p>Almost like he was six-fucking-teen again, cagily looking at the door and expecting his mum to come in and catch him texting his <em> boyfriend. </em></p><p>Bad comparison. Darius grunted and fumbled in the dark for the communicator until his fingers finally made contact.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> Your heart rate and brainwave patterns are<br/></em> <em> irregular. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> yeah fucking tell me about it </em></p><p><em> also. fucking creepy. you monitoring my<br/></em> <em> vitals or something? </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> I have a vested interest in keeping you alive,<br/></em> <em> so yes, I am monitoring your vitals.<br/></em> <em> I receive alerts when your vitals indicate<br/></em> <em> distress, as they just did. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> not like you could do anything about it<br/></em> <em> from wherever the fuck you are </em></p><p>No response. Darius suppressed a groan and rubbed his face in one hand. Mobius had brought him into the fold for cybersecurity before realizing he was way better at putting on masks and looking completely unremarkable, which he was, but for however much he was good at blending in with people, he sure didn’t <em> really </em> fit in. Exhibit fucking A.</p><p><em> I have a vested interest in keeping you alive. </em> The horrible, shitty side of Darius--which was to say, most of him--wanted to retort <em> yeah, it’d be a shame if your favorite experiment bit the dust when you weren’t around to perform a vivisection after. </em></p><p>Maybe it was the nightmare. Maybe it was the <em> I have a vested interest in keeping you alive </em> <em>,</em> even if only because Darius was Ruben’s best bet for avoiding <em> another </em> capture, death, and vivisection at Mobius’ hands. Maybe it was the fact that he’d gotten an alert indicating Darius’ distress, and bothered to check in at all. He was sure as fuck nobody else gave even that much of a shit.</p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> thankless job, by the way </em></p><p>
  <em> keeping me alive, i mean </em>
</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> I’m aware. I’ve yet to receive a word of<br/></em> <em> gratitude for it. </em></p><p><em> Since you have the ability to be crass, I<br/></em> <em> assume you are not actively dying? </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> disappointed? </em></p><p><em> You’re flirting, Darius, </em> the miniscule smart side of him accused. <em> You’re fucking flirting with Mobius’ Enemy #1 while you're supposed to be on the fucking run from whatever's left of them. </em></p><p>He could very well have just confirmed that his heart rate was not, in fact, because he was actively under attack. Not from anything he could really fight, at least. He could have confirmed that and gone back to pretending to sleep until Kidman and Ventura were awake, and instead he was laying awake in bed, trading barbs like he would be if the other half of his communicator were here in the room with him.</p><p>Christ, he really was like a fucking teenager texting his boyfriend.</p><p>It was, Darius decided, ultimately a good thing he <em> wasn’t </em> here, because so far Darius had avoided having an episode like that in front of him, by just skirting the edge of sleep without delving into it. Left him even more exhausted come morning, but it was better than <em> that </em> happening.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> Contrary to your apparent belief, having<br/></em> <em> a vested interest in your continued existence<br/></em> <em> means that your death would, in fact, be<br/></em> <em> unfortunate news. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> awful long-winded way of saying ‘glad<br/></em> <em> you haven’t bit it yet, jackass’ </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> To say that I am ‘glad’ would be an<br/></em> <em> overstatement. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> yeah right that’s why you were waiting<br/></em> <em> up next to your communicator for my<br/></em> <em> vitals to spike. like a fucking creep. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> You assume that my entire world revolves<br/></em> <em> around you. </em></p><p><em> Your heart rate is still above average. Some-<br/></em> <em> thing still disturbs you. </em></p><p>Darius had to bite his cheek to suppress the sudden snort of amusement and annoyance. He’d bet that the fucker didn’t even get the irony of those two messages juxtaposed next to each other. Somehow, it was the second sentence of the second message that irritated him the most. <em> Something still disturbs you</em><em>,</em> like Darius hadn’t seen and been host to all sorts of fucking disturbing things as one of Mobius’ top agents.</p><p>And yet, despite all of that, it was his own brother’s face that fucked him up more than anything else, the only person who’d ever fucking loved him, who would hate what Darius had become to survive. Whoever Darius was anymore, it wasn’t that seventeen-year-old kid bawling his eyes out over a sheet-covered corpse. That kid had died that day surely as Toby had.</p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> i’m fine. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> Your heart rate says differently. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> look, you see i’m alive, why don’t you<br/></em> <em> just go the fuck back to sleep </em></p><p>From oddly endearing to fucking annoying in the blink of an eye. Setting the communicator down slightly harder than he needed to, Darius turned over pointedly onto his other side, facing away from the bedside table. When it buzzed again, several moments later, he rolled over, opened the table drawer, and dropped the communicator within, which was really where it should’ve been in the first place. Sloppy.</p><p>An hour of pointless tossing and turning later, Darius’ curiosity got the better of him, and he reached back into the drawer for the communicator, checking the unread message.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> For your information, monitoring your vitals<br/></em> <em> from this distance might do nothing to aid<br/></em> <em> you in the event you were actively dying,<br/></em> <em> but it does provide your location where I<br/></em> <em> might find evidence of the culprits. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> to thank them? </em></p><p>He really was a fucking idiot, but it was practically bone-deep at this point and impossible to get rid of. The only person who cared enough to find the <em> culprits </em> of his potential death and he was giving a shitty three-word reply invalidating all of it.</p><p>Really, it was a skill. Just one Darius hated and needed.</p><p>Darius received no response, and expected none, but as night slowly gave way to dawn, he could feel the near-constant pit in his stomach that said he’d made a mistake.</p><p>Story of his fucking life.</p><hr/><p>Contrary to what may or may not have been popular belief, Ruben was not a light sleeper.</p><p>He had been once. Most of his childhood, spent alone in a basement while the world did its best to forget about him, his nights--or whatever the equivalent when no light reached him to herald the start and end of the day--had been spent tiptoeing the boundary between wakefulness and slumber. After STEM, and after Beacon, his sleep had inexplicably become much deeper.</p><p>Had he the time or the resources, he might have wanted to experiment on that fact. Was it Leslie’s residual influence, the differences in his body versus Ruben’s own? Some subliminal part of Ruben’s consciousness that told him, for once, he was not hated, because he was thought to be dead?</p><p>Forgotten again, and the thought should have irked him. Would have, once upon a not-so-distant time. Still did, if he considered it for too long.</p><p>Ruben’s sleep was deep, dreamless, and heavy, which made the sudden chime of Archer’s health monitor that much more jarring.</p><p>After removing the subdermal chip from the skull of one of the Mobius agents sent to “escort” him back to their headquarters when first leaving Beacon, Ruben had attempted to take it apart, piece by piece. Technology was his strength, but Mobius technology was something different, and he had spent several occasions during his year tracking Archer’s movements attempting to dismantle it, to little avail. After handing the chip over to Archer on the first day they traveled together, he had taken over the project instead.</p><p>Under Archer’s more informed touch, the old subdermal chip had become a harmless health monitor, which he had permitted Ruben to place in his skull before he departed for the Union mission, in a different place than typical Mobius chips would be, for emergencies. He had not expected to need it.</p><p>He had not expected to feel a jump in his chest that felt suspiciously like <em> panic </em> when the alert roused him from his slumber.</p><p>On Archer’s abandoned tablet, Ruben pulled up the readings from his health monitor. Vastly accelerated heart rate, with the fear and panic areas of his brain lit up brighter than he had ever seen it, even during the occasion Ruben had performed anaesthesia-free head surgery on him.</p><p>Either he was dying, or he simply <em> thought </em> he was. Neither option was particularly desirable.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> Your heart rate and brainwave patterns are<br/></em> <em> irregular. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> yeah fucking tell me about it </em></p><p><em> also. fucking creepy. you monitoring my<br/></em> <em> vitals or something? </em></p><p>It gave Ruben two pieces of information: firstly, that Archer was clearly alive and well enough to antagonize him. Secondly, he had been so deep in the throes of panic he had forgotten entirely that the chip in his brain was a health monitor in the first place.</p><p>Ruben didn’t know how to feel about either fact. Under any other circumstances, the function of the mind while plagued by such intense emotion would have been the crux of his life’s work, the symphony of feeling that the brain revealed when nothing else was truly honest, in that moment.</p><p>Ruben looked at Archer’s brain activity, the obvious fear and panic which had only just begun to recede, and did not see a symphony.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> I have a vested interest in keeping you alive,<br/></em> <em> so yes, I am monitoring your vitals. </em></p><p><em> I receive alerts when your vitals indicate<br/></em> <em> distress, as they just did. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> not like you could do anything about it<br/></em> <em> from wherever the fuck you are </em></p><p>Ruben was rather unexpectedly stung, and did not like the feeling. He decided it wasn’t worth reminding Archer that <em> he </em> had been the one to insist on going on the Union mission as well as the one after it alone, without Ruben, and given him locations of several safe houses for him to choose from as hideouts. How long Ruben was intended to hide here, he had no inkling, but it was secure, well-stocked, and gave him ample silence and time for research.</p><p>The communicator buzzed. Against his better judgment, Ruben picked it up.</p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> thankless job, by the way </em></p><p>
  <em> keeping me alive, i mean </em>
</p><p>He rolled his eyes before he could stop the motion, an immature, childish gesture he had picked up from Archer himself. A vast understatement if there ever was one. Archer was surly, abrasive, and harsh, to put things kindly. Keeping him alive required no small investment of Ruben’s time and energy.</p><p>It was more difficult than he cared to admit to ignore the implications behind the fact he felt like putting in that time and energy in the first place, and far easier to retort with a typical barb.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> I’m aware. I’ve yet to receive a word of<br/></em> <em> gratitude for it. </em></p><p><em> Since you have the ability to be crass, I<br/></em> <em> assume you are not actively dying? </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> disappointed? </em></p><p>Darius Archer had once been one of Mobius’ most effective and ruthless agents, with the guile and skill to become one of their longest-serving field operatives, and he certainly never let anyone forget it. Anyone except Ruben, it seemed, because here, he was not the terrifying force of nature that Mobius had shaped and molded him into. No, he was simply an oblivious, dense man with a morbid sense of self-deprecating humor that Ruben found both annoying and amusing. That, or he was exercising his sense of dry humor <em> against </em> Ruben, which was not outside the realm of possibility.</p><p>If Archer truly thought Ruben would be <em> disappointed </em> by the evidence he was not, in fact, dying far away from Ruben’s reach, after everything Ruben had shared with him, even--perhaps especially--in the years before this arrangement, he was more a fool than even Ruben thought he might be.</p><p>It was worth reminding him of that fact in statements phrased for simpletons.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> Contrary to your apparent belief, having<br/></em> <em> a vested interest in your continued existence<br/></em> <em> means that your death would, in fact, be<br/></em> <em> unfortunate news. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> awful long-winded way of saying ‘glad<br/></em> <em> you haven’t bit it yet, jackass’ </em></p><p><em> Glad. </em> Such a simple, tiny word, and it cut down to something in Ruben’s core that he didn’t want to examine, perhaps an odd sentiment for a man who had become the god of a world shaped by his own hands, within his own mind. Outsiders, <em> intruders</em><em>,</em> had seen those deep parts of him, fought them without flinching, and alone, he could not delve into the feelings the word <em> glad </em> provoked in him.</p><p>Two years he had traveled with Archer, before Agent Kidman had roped him into their little scheme to dismantle Mobius from within STEM. A surprisingly well-conceived idea, all things considered, but it rankled just slightly knowing it would be carried out with technology <em> he </em> had initially developed for his own usage, before Mobius had stolen it out from under him.</p><p>“Think of it this way,” Archer had told him before the cab arrived that would take him to the airport, wherever he was going to meet Agent Kidman, “it’s one last indirect ‘fuck you’ to them for what they did to you.”</p><p>It <em> had </em> helped. Inexplicably, surprisingly. STEM had been stolen from him by Mobius, and now it would be used to dismantle them entirely, something <em> he </em> had built.</p><p>“Did they suffer?” Ruben had asked on Archer’s secure communicator line after he had emerged from the artificial world of Union. Archer had not permitted any verbal communication since leaving the Mobius compound--</p><p>(For valid reasons, he knew, because with the company Archer kept right now, being discovered speaking to anyone about that mission, least of all him, would be enough for Agent Kidman to lose whatever fledgling trust she had in Archer’s motivations, but it did not change the fact it had been over a week since Ruben heard that voice after hearing it every day for two years prior, and many years before that, and he was terrified, irrationally so, that he would forget what it sounded like one day.)</p><p>--but Ruben vividly remembered that last conversation, in perfect clarity and detail.</p><p>Archer had not even batted an eye or hesitated at the question, answering as calm as you please, “The Administrator died screaming with blood pouring from his eyes. Pretty sure I heard ‘em pop. Looks like everyone else in the compound went through basically the same thing.”</p><p>And if <em> that </em> mental image hadn’t made that mission worth Archer’s absence, nothing did.</p><p>Ruben was...unsettled by the realization he <em> was </em> glad, in Archer’s casual terms, that he was not actively dying.</p><p>That did not mean he was capable of saying so.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> To say that I am ‘glad’ would be an<br/></em> <em> overstatement. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> yeah right that’s why you were waiting<br/></em> <em> up next to your communicator for my<br/></em> <em> vitals to spike. like a fucking creep. </em></p><p>Far too smart for his own good, and for Ruben’s as well. Ruben had not exactly been <em> waiting </em> for an occasion where Archer’s vitals spiked past the norm, but the fact he monitored them at all, that he awoke at the first hint something was amiss, that was enough to condemn him.</p><p>It made him angry. He hated that, hated that his emotions had such sway over him, particularly his emotions where Darius Archer was concerned.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> You assume that my entire world revolves<br/></em> <em> around you. </em></p><p>Chancing a look at the tablet to check the health monitor, Ruben noted that Archer’s brain activity had begun to settle, but his heart rate remained elevated. Almost against his will, he sent a follow-up message.</p><p><em> Your heart rate is still above average. Some-<br/></em> <em> thing still disturbs you. </em></p><p>Anger made him honest. He hated that, too.</p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> i’m fine. </em></p><p>Even without the usual niceties and norms belonging to most of the rest of today’s society, Ruben knew a lie when he saw it in plain text. Archer’s body betrayed him in that respect. He briefly wondered if he would be able to reach that same conclusion with the same certainty if Archer himself stood in front of him, rather than a tablet displaying his vitals.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> Your heart rate says differently. </em></p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> look, you see i’m alive, why don’t you<br/></em> <em> just go the fuck back to sleep </em></p><p>It was not an unexpected response, and yet it still made Ruben curl his lip. How embarrassingly <em> obvious </em> did he have to be? Years ago he had allowed Archer into his world--<em>b</em><em>oth </em> of his worlds--given him the tools to shape parts of it as he wished, a bona fide demigod of STEM, with brainwave patterns so achingly similar to Ruben’s own. He had sought Archer out after fleeing Beacon, as the sole surviving rogue Mobius agent who remained alive longer than a week following their insubordination. He had given Archer <em> gifts</em><em>,</em> in the form of his freedom from Mobius’ immediate wrath, in the <em> care </em> a health monitor implied, and the effort it took to check on him, the person implanted with it, when alerts sounded off in the middle of the night.</p><p>It would have undoubtedly been smarter to let the conversation end there, to leave Archer to his own miserable thoughts, but Ruben couldn’t quite resist the impulsive urge to get the last word in. He still chose his words carefully, more than aware of the impact he hoped to achieve.</p><p>It was several minutes later that Ruben structured a stilted, angry reply, and sent it.</p><p><em> <span class="u">R:</span><br/></em> <em> For your information, monitoring your vitals<br/></em> <em> from this distance might do nothing to aid<br/></em> <em> you in the event you were actively dying,<br/></em> <em> but it does provide your location where I<br/></em> <em> might find evidence of the culprits. </em></p><p>Only silence greeted that statement, and Ruben’s grip tightened around the communicator, struggling with the impulse to hurl it at the nearest wall. Instead, he set it down, with more noticeable care than usual, on his desk, rolling over in the threadbare emergency cot that constituted the extent of the safe house’s bedding.</p><p>He had <em> thought </em> it was an unspoken and tacitly accepted truth that Archer was <em> Ruben's</em><em>,</em> and any harm that befell him would be met with due wrath. Archer had been Ruben’s from the day he’d set foot in Ruben’s old Mobius lab and fallen asleep amidst the smell of blood and metal and paper and ink, the implements for his experiments and recording their gruesome results.</p><p>Apparently Archer was still unaware of that fact, years later, despite everything Ruben had done for him. Ruben had thought nobody in the world, particularly not a former, disillusioned Mobius agent, could be so dense, and yet, the evidence was irrefutable.</p><p>From the desk, the communicator buzzed. The analog clock upon the desk’s surface told Ruben it had been nearly an hour since his last message, and it was with no small amount of unseen trepidation that he picked up the communicator to read Archer’s response.</p><p><em> <span class="u">D:</span><br/></em> <em> to thank them? </em></p><p>Ruben dropped the communicator, lest he actually destroy it with the force of his rage--temporarily ignoring the fact that destroying it, and thereby destroying his last link to Archer, was unacceptable--and balled his hands into fists, slamming one into his desk. Pain reverberated through his hand and arm, and pain was something Ruben was more than familiar with feeling, something he had lived with for most of his life, something he craved and hated in equal measure, but this pain felt <em> frustrating</em><em>,</em> not deliciously real, or maybe <em> too </em> deliciously real. His old body had been accustomed to pain. Leslie’s was not.</p><p>Cradling his throbbing hand in his free one, Ruben flopped back down onto the cot, facing petulantly away from the communicator and closing his eyes, even if he knew sleep was beyond him now. Fury was ever his most reliable fuel, and it ran inferno-hot through his veins tonight.</p><p>Darius Archer was a dense, obstinate, horribly abrasive <em> fool</em><em>,</em> but Ruben was still the greater fool, for keeping him.</p>
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